Beard After Hours
After the disastrous semifinal against Manchester City, Beard decides to go shake off the loss instead of riding home on the team bus. Although they are broken up, Jane texts him inviting him out to a club with her; Beard types out a message telling her that he's tired of her toying with his feelings, but doesn't send it. He goes to The Crown and Anchor and bonds with Baz, Jeremy, and Paul. When the pub closes, the four of them sneak into a swanky private club where Beard sees a mysterious woman in a red dress.
Beard rips his pants and gets thrown out of the club. In the street, he runs into the mysterious woman, who brings him back to her flat and gives him a pair of colorful sequined pants to wear while she mends his. They are interrupted by the woman's huge, intimidating boyfriend. Beard runs away, leaving behind his phone and wallet.
Beard wanders through the city trying to find transportation home. He runs into Jamie's father, James, and his friends, who beat him up in retaliation for throwing James out of the locker room. Beard is saved by the woman's boyfriend, who scares off his attackers and returns Beard's phone and wallet. Beard finds that his phone is full of increasingly unhinged texts from Jane telling him that she loves him too and berating him for not coming to the club with her. Before he can text her back, his phone dies.
Baz, Jeremy, and Paul pull up in a limousine hired with money they won playing pool at the private club. Beard thanks them for giving him a ride home by giving them directions to a secret entrance to Nelson Road stadium. Once they drive away, however, Beard's key breaks in the lock of his front door. Beard takes shelter in a church, where he hears distant dance music. He follows the sound and finds that the church basement contains the rave club where Jane has been all night. The two of them dance together. In the morning, Beard goes to review the game tape with the other coaches, still wearing the sequined pants from his night out.
Tropes featured in "Beard After Hours" include:
- Acting Unnatural: Beard tells the pub regulars to "act cool" when waiting for the receptionist to pass by so they can sneak into the club. Paul stands awkwardly to block Beard from her view, Jeremy points out Orion in the sky (to no one in particular), and Baz starts moonwalking.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Knowing that the coaches will be reluctant to re-watch the curb-stomping they received from Manchester City, Ted speeds up the match footage and dubs "Yakety Sax" over the top of it. Even Roy can't help chuckling.
- Bathos: Crazy Jealous Guy riding off on his kid's scooter.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Beard and the Pub Trio lure the receptionist to a swanky bar away from her station by calling to tell her that her apartment has burned down. Once she's been distracted, they walk in while pretending they always go there, and Beard later pretends to be an Irish Oxford Professor with the Pub Trio as his students.
- Big Damn Heroes: The man who chased Beard out of the mystery woman's house appears to defend him from Tartt and his friends.
- Big "NO!": Beard reacts this way after the key to his building breaks off in the lock and it immediately starts raining right after.
- Breather Episode: This episode, following the very heavy "Man City", is (relatively) light on plot and heavy on surreal, dreamlike imagery.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Beard adopts an Irish accent to convince a bunch of bar patrons that he's an Irish professor from Oxford and that Baz, Jeremy, and Paul are his students.
- Coolest Club Ever: Beard visits two of them. The first is Bones and Honey, an uber-exclusive, classic British gentlemen's club he and the pub regulars get into under a ruse. The second is a rave club in the back of a church.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: The Lady in Red's boyfriend has it out for Beard. Subverted later in the episode after he learns what Beard was actually doing at his girlfriend's house, and he actually confesses to how unhealthy his jealousy is.
- A Day in the Limelight: The episode follows the adventures of Beard after the disastrous FA cup semifinal. To a lesser extent, it's also the first time Baz, Jeremy, and Paul appear outside of the pub for an extended period.
- Dream Episode: Beard goes on one big trip, and it's left ambiguous which parts of it really happened.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Beard goes through a lot of crap in this episode, but finally manages to get to the club where Jane is, wins her back, and impresses the other clubgoers with his hula-hooping skills.
- Fantasy Keepsake: Back with his coaching staff, Beard is seen wearing the sequined trousers he got at the mystery woman's place.
- Filler: This is one of two episodes that were added to the season's order after it had been mapped out. As a result, it takes a tangential approach to the overall story arc and delves into Beard's psychology.
- Foil: James Tartt and his two friends serve as this to the Pub Regulars. A trio of fans for different football clubs, but while the Pub Regulars are rude, ultimately they're kind and supportive, whereas Tartt and his friends are abusive jerks who want to beat the crap out of Beard.
- Foreshadowing: When Beard enters his flat at the start of the episode, he has difficulty with the lock and has to jiggle the key a few times. When he returns towards the end of the episode, he has to jiggle it again, and it ends up breaking.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Beard is on the bus after escaping from the Crazy Jealous Guy, you can see the neon purple cross of the church/rave club Jane is in reflected on the window behind him as he passes it.
- Graceful Loser: The three Oxford guys take their losses to the Pub Trio in pool extremely well. So well that they cheer passionately at the Trio's skills and buy them drinks in addition to paying out their losses. They enjoy the competition so much that they don't even kick the Trio out when they find out they aren't club members. It's a marked contrast to how badly Beard is taking the loss to Man City, and indeed he spends most of the time inside his own head and miserable.
- Hero of Another Story: Beard's weird night plays out this way to the rest of the coaches. Ted asks how he got the bruise on his face and Beard brushes it off; Ted accepts that and lets Beard keep his night to himself.
- Hope Spot:
- Having lost his phone and wallet, Beard is looking for help getting back home. Walking into a tunnel, he sees three people approaching him and gratefully calls out to them, thinking he's been saved... only for them to turn out to be James Tartt and his friends.
- Later, after finally making it home, Beard goes to unlock his front door...and the key (which he nearly lost multiple times) snaps off in the lock.
- If You Can Read This: Pausing to read Jane's texts to Beard (transcribed here
) provides a lot of insight into just how toxic and unstable she really is. - Irony: Once Jane finally admits she loves Beard and bumps into him at the club, he's dancing to "Hello" by Martin Solveig and Dragonette, a song about someone who's just here to enjoy the party and definitely isn't interested in the listener. To add further irony, the song would've fit Jane perfectly at the start of the episode, when Beard was upset that he said he loved her and she hadn't responded in kind.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- The burly man in a relationship with the mystery woman at the club initially tries to beat up Beard because he thinks they were sleeping together. After he learns the truth, he looks for Beard around the neighborhood to return his phone and wallet and winds up saving him when he comes across James Tartt and his pals assaulting him. He later apologizes for being so hostile towards Beard earlier.
- The Oxford bar patrons start off as snobby and rude but they show themselves to be this after Baz, Jeremy and Paul best them at pool and drink happily with them the rest of the night. They also don't care when the three reveal that they never went to Oxford and still get along with them, even inviting them to their country house for Easter.
- Lady in Red: One key figure of Beard's night is an attractive mystery woman in a red robe.
- Mistaken for Cheating: The Lady in Red's boyfriend mistakes Beard for her lover, which is why he enters the apartment on a rampage, forcing Beard to flee.
- No Escape but Down: Beard on the rooftop is forced to jump off in order to evade the clutches of the Crazy Jealous Guy.
- No Fame, No Wealth, No Service: "Bones & Honey", the exclusive posh club, is members-only.
- Oh, Crap!: Almost exactly what Beard says when he runs into James Tartt and his two friends.
- One Crazy Night: Beard's night out gets weirder and weirder.
- Prayer Is a Last Resort: After being put through the wringer for most of the episode, Beard finds himself in a church and ends up praying to God for a way to get back with Jane. He even lampshades it, referring to himself as a "long-time listener, first-time caller". The prayer works - the rain stops, allowing him to hear the rave music coming from the basement, where he finds Jane.
- Previously on…: The episode opens with the scene from "Man City" where Beard tells Ted he's going to blow off some steam instead of joining the team on the bus back to the facility.
- Psychological Projection: The mystery woman's massive boyfriend is pretty candid with Beard that his jealous tendencies are rooted in his own problems with cheating in the past. His guilt about this is what drives him to track Beard down and apologize.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": Beard lets out several when he realizes that he has a lot of missed calls and texts from Jane.
- Reference Overdosed: The episode is packed with Shout Outs to The Matrix, Fight Club and other reality-bending classics.
- Refuge in Audacity: How Beard gets into Bones and Honey, and how he tricks the regulars into thinking he's a retired Oxford professor. It backfires when he runs into James Tart and his mates.Beard: Look, how about we call this a draw. (lands a punch, gets put in a full nelson)
James: (picks up a pipe) You had to push it, dintya? Say good night, son. - Rule of Symbolism:
- Beard finally finds Jane at the end of the night, after she's finally confessed her love for him, and what does she do? She hands him a ring. At a church. Okay, it's a hula hoop at a rave in the basement, but still.
- Throughout the episode, the moon can be seen shining bigger and bluer than usual, symbolising not only Manchester City's crushing victory and how it haunts Beard throughout the episodenote , but also the fact that - as Ted reminds Beard at the end of the episode - some things only happen every once in a blue moon.
- Running Gag:
- Beard continually dropping/losing his keys. This is ultimately subverted when he shows up at his flat and... he hasn't lost his keys. Instead they break off in the lock.
- Beard imagining Thierry Henry and Gary Lineker running insulting commentary on him, and responding with an indignant "Shut up, Thierry Henry!"
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Beard wisely tries to run away when he runs into Tartt Sr and his friends. Unfortunately, he runs into a dead end and they kick the shit out of him.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: As with After Hours, the episode's inspiration, the plot is a rambling series of vignettes that bleed into each other.
- Shout-Out:
- Beard says that "Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Sarah Coombes' life."
- When Beard prays in a church while taking shelter from the rain, he opens his prayer with "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret's little boy".
- Street Smart: The Three Guys From The Pub beat the three Oxford guys at pool. The Oxford guys know trigonometry... hell, they know what trigonometry even is, but our boys play pool every night.
- Take Off Your Clothes: The Lady in Red orders Bears to take his trousers off with a demanding voice. She only wants to mend them, though.
- Team Power Walk: Beard and his three pals walking down the street in slow motion celebrating their new clothes.
- The Television Talks Back: Thierry Henry and Gary Lineker on the TV make references to things in Beard's apartment.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Early on, Beard gets drunk while watching a sports TV show with Gary Lineker and Thierry Henry (both playing themselves) discussing Richmond's game from earlier that day. He repeatedly hallucinates the two criticizing him personally throughout the episode, responding each time with an indignant "Shut up, Thierry Henry!".
- Trash Landing: When Beard has to escape the mysterious woman's house after her jealous partner arrives, he ends up jumping off the roof and straight into a dumpster filled to the brim with trash bags. The worst possible version of this Television Is Trying to Kill Us trope, as Beard goes in feet first. Would've broken both his legs, even with the best of trash.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: None of the other coaches comment on Beard still wearing the sequined pants when he walks into the club at the end of the episode.
- Variations on a Theme Song: The normal opening sequence is replaced by a scene with Beard riding The London Underground, with the theme song performed by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame rather than Marcus Mumford.
- Vehicle Vanish: Beard disappears from Crazy Jealous Guy's view into a bypassing bus.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is one to After Hours, which also revolves around a man's surreal adventures on a night after work.
